Summary: Gonzaga University School of Law is choosing to reduce their staff by offering their tenured professors a buy-out option in the midst of lagging enrollment numbers.
No law school has been exempt from the dip in enrollment numbers for the past five years. Some schools have lowered admissions criteria in efforts to keep their numbers up while other law schools are downsizing the faculty and buildings.
Gonzaga University School of Law is one of the schools that have opted to downsize their faculty. Since 2011, their application pool has dropped 36 percent leading to enrollment to drop 28 percent. In order to keep the integrity of the type of students they admit, they are offering buy-outs to their tenured professors. The law school has 17 faculty members that have received the offer, four of which have accepted. Dean Jane Korn does not think the school will need to cut any more positions.
Korn explains their reason behind this move as, “Nationally, since 2011, applications to law schools have dropped around 40 percent. Every dean had to make a decision to lower standards or take a budget hit, and we decided to take the budget hit.” While she did not give up the number for the school budget, she says the staff numbers are setup to work with a student body of 525 students or 175 per class. In 2010, the number for first-year students was 183 but by 2014, that first-year class was at 125. That number is well below the 175 target size that the school supplies faculty for.
Korn goes on to say, “We’re doing this because when you look at the situation ahead, you want to make sure Gonzaga has a bright and successful future. We did this to avoid problems in the future.”
Photo: news.gonzaga.edu